


i'll stop the world and melt with you

by whataboutateakettle



Category: Scorpion (TV 2014)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-18
Updated: 2016-02-18
Packaged: 2018-05-21 11:20:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6049669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whataboutateakettle/pseuds/whataboutateakettle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i> She just wants to enjoy her new bed without feeling like her skin is going to melt into the sheets. </i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	i'll stop the world and melt with you

**Author's Note:**

> I've made a detour through fluffville apparently and here we are. Inspired by lots of things, including the relative heat wave my city had a couple weeks ago and also pillowtalk by zayn malik (we were this close to have a title from that song).

“Happy, I’m in no way doubting your superpower, but even _you_ can’t return power to Downtown Los Angeles from our bedroom,” Toby says from the bed. Their bed. She wipes her wrist against her sweaty forehead and takes the torch she had been holding with her teeth, pointedly ignores him.

He’s lucky she even has this torch, along with maybe half a toolkit, from the back of her truck, because who knows which of the dozen boxes they have stacked around the place holds the rest of her stuff.

The boxes they’d spent last Saturday moving into this place, before the call from Cabe, before they raced to the Garage, before they spent the last week hopping through three different states and then up to Canada, before they spent the last week sleeping in vans and hotel rooms instead of their new bed.

She’s thought about that bed a lot in the last few days. It was the first thing delivered into their new place. She picked it out, a whole size bigger than the one she had in her old place, she could starfish in it two times over if she wanted to. And she’d planned to.

She hadn’t planned to be sat on the floor in her underwear and a tank top that had been in her bag for a week, with a torch pointed at their air conditioning unit which was _not working_. She hadn’t planned to arrive back to Los Angeles late at night in the middle of a heatwave and a power cut. If she had, she could’ve made sure to fix her generator. The spare one at the garage wouldn’t work on the circuits in this building so she’d need to build one from scratch. And she can’t do that from _here_.

It’s then that she registers what he’s said.

“You’re right,” she says pushing herself up, and turning towards him.

He lifts his arms against the bright shine of her torch, but she can still see his raised, “I am?”

“I can’t fix it from here, but I can do it at the source.”

“Wha- _No_!” He scrambles forward and grabs her wrist from the edge of the bed. His hand is sweaty, just like her own skin and she flinches away from the burning touch. She can’t handle it, not right now, not in this heat. “Let’s just go to bed. Try and get some sleep.”

“How are you planning to sleep when it’s nearly a hundred degrees?” She asks him, her voice sounds tired and edgy and she feels the same; she sits down on the bed anyway.

“It’s after midnight already, there’s a good chance it will cool down in a couple hours,” he says, shifts around on the bed, but she shines the torch in his eyes before he can reach her again. “Look, if the power’s not back on in the morning, we’ll go out the power station and you can fix it. I promise.”

She bites her lip, knows that he’s trying. But his words stick to her skin like the air around her; she doesn’t want his promise, she just wants to enjoy her new bed without out feeling like her skin is going to melt into the sheets.

“Curtis, if you so much as touch me, I’ll break your fingers,” she hisses, and shuffles back on the bed before turning off her torch and dropping it off the side of the bed. The moonlight coming through their blinds doesn’t reach the bed, and in the darkness she wrestles with the sheets, pushes them all in his direction before lying down flat on the bed. The bed feels cool under her skin for all of three seconds.

He makes a little grunt of acknowledgement, but doesn’t say anything, and fights with the sheets she’s shoved at him until she feels him lay down next to her and she feels the empty space between their bodies. She thinks of the last time they fell asleep together, three nights ago in Texas, in a bed barely big enough for the two of them. She remembers him making sarcastic comments about the hotel hygiene, remembers laughing, curling into him, falling asleep quickly, easily, comfortably. She remembers looking forward to their new bed, to their new home.

Except their new actual home, their new actual bed, feels nothing like that cheap hotel in Texas and that fact knots in her stomach.

* * *

She’s sure it hasn’t been more than thirty minutes, but it feels like hours. The heat feels endless. Toby is sleeping peacefully next to her, somehow, and she can barely close her eyes without feeling the sweat was piling up behind her lids. Resentment hugs the uncertainty in her middle and she feels even more uncomfortable on the mattress she had been so sure about a week ago. Their bedroom window is open, but the air around her is stagnant and sticky and she feels like the sheets under her are about to crawl up and suffocate her.

She lasts only another handful of minutes, staring at ceiling, counting the traffic lights from here to the garage, going over engine plans in her head, before she feels like the very hair on her head is growing tighter by the second and she gives up. She climbs out of bed hastily, desperately, even though her limbs feel heavy and stuck, and heads out of the bedroom, through the almost bare living room, to the sliding glass doors that open out to their balcony, with the concrete floor and the iron-rod railing. 

Outside is ever so slightly more tolerable. It’s not cooler, but there are no walls to trap her in with the heat and she feels like she can breathe again. The power is out on their whole street, and it looks so different from the last time she was out here making plans, but the moon is large and bright and casts a low glow over everything.

* * *

She’s sitting on the floor; her back against the glass, knees tucked towards her chest. She doesn’t even hear him until the door shifts behind her back and she looks up. Toby’s standing there, still only in his boxers, holding a tub of ice cream in one hand and a couple spoons in the other. 

“Look what I found. It’s a bit melted, but still cold,” Toby says, sits down next to her and hands her a spoon. The ice cream is her favorite; they’d bought it on the way here a week ago, the back of her truck piled with boxes. They were planning to celebrate with it. She wants to tell him he shouldn’t have opened the freezer at all, but she can’t even bring herself to care. It’s not like they had much food in there. She wants to ask him where he even found the spoons. 

But she just takes one, and the tub out of his hands and digs in; lets the soft _cold_ sweetness melt on her tongue and down her throat. He’s watching her, a small smile on his face and she’s torn between reminding him that there’s nothing much to smile about and, well, smiling back.

“I imagined it differently,” she says finally, after a second mouthful. He waits for her to continue, reaches out to take a spoonful of ice cream for himself. “We moved in a week ago and haven’t even spent twelve hours in this place. I just thought it would feel more…”

“Sure?” he offers.

She bites her lip, nods slowly. She thinks about how long it took them to get here, how everything was strange until it was suddenly so sure. And she was so sure about this, when she suggested it, when they found this place, when she bought the bed. She expected the final part to be just as sure.

Ice cream drips from her spoon onto her thigh, and his hand flies down before she has a chance to react. His finger rubs her skin gently and he looks at her as he brings it to his mouth.

She raises an eyebrow, “I’m starting to think you’re enjoying this.”

Toby shrugs, “ _Me_? Enjoying eating ice cream with the woman of my dreams while she’s in her underwear. I resent that.”

She smiles before she realizes she’s doing it, shakes her head at him, at his unabashed determination to make her feel better, to be sure about what she’s not. She digs her spoon back into the tub.

He pokes her in the knee with the end of his spoon, waits until she looks at him again. “I know this week hasn’t gone as planned, but maybe it’s a chance to-”

“To what, roast to death?” She scoffs, flicks her spoon towards him, and ice cream lands on his collarbone. He huffs loudly and starts to reach up but this time she’s faster, holds his hand down before leaning forward. She can feel him watching her, following her, as she dips her head, brings her mouth closer and licks the ice cream off his skin. He’s still staring when she straightens and meets his gaze again, licking her lips. When she lifts her head up again, he’s still staring and she smiles at him.

“Really?” he asks her with two raised eyebrows. Even in the dim glow of the moon, she can see his eyes are darker, that his jaw is a little tighter. She shrugs, brings another spoonful of ice cream to her mouth and licks at if before it melts off. She keeps her eyes on him, sees him swallow something down.

“Did it just get hot out here?”

She laughs, she can’t help it. She laughs because it’s nearly 100 degrees at one in the morning and she’s trying to seduce her boyfriend with spoonful of ice cream because she doesn’t know how else to deal with this situation. She laughs because this is their apartment, _theirs_ , and they haven’t even slept in it yet, let alone slept together.She laughs because for a moment the knot in her stomach feels looser, and if nothing else, covered in ice cream.

She’s not sure where to go from here, watches him lean his head back against the glass door and close his eyes.

“You are going to be the death of me,” he says, resigned. He doesn’t look too upset about it though, and she takes it as a sign to keep going. She pushes herself up and over him, if she puts enough weight on his legs, it won’t hurt her knees so much. She holds his face close to her and kisses him, and his hands slip under the back of her tank top. His mouth is hot and his skin is hot and his fingers are burning though her ribs, but she kisses him firmly, fervently, until he pushes her away by the waist and looks up at her with dark eyes and a weary smile.

“No seriously, I might actually die of hyperthermia if you keep doing that.”

She narrows her eyes at him but sighs because he’s right. It’s too hot to be this close, to be touching this much. She was almost hoping she could distract herself from it, but every part of her still feels sticky and uncomfortable. She shifts off his lap back onto the floor, rubs at her knees, feels awkward and restless all over again.

He nudges the half-eaten tub in front of her, both spoons dropping further into gooey mess of chocolate and fudge. She looks over at him, and he earnestly nods towards the ice cream and she can’t help but wonder why he thinks ice cream will help, can’t help but smile that he does.

He shifts a little next to her, but doesn’t move, and the knot in her stomach unravels a little more.

* * *

Somewhere there’s a loud rattling, and in the back of her mind she figures it’s the air con coming back to life. She shuffles instinctively, needing suddenly to be close to him, tucks her face against the nape of his neck, winds an arm around his torso, wraps a leg over his hip. Her mind is still in a haze of sleep and all she wants it to return to it with him. She can’t even remember when they fell back into bed, but she knows it wasn't that long ago. They stayed out on the balcony until the ice cream was gone, until the temperature dropped a degree or two, until their butts got sore from the concrete. They got up on their feet and he pressed her up against the cool glass, kissed her slowly and sleepily, pressed his lips to her neck and joked that her skin was too salty.

“For the record, _you’re_ touching me,” Toby says, his voice husky with sleep.

She smiles, presses her lips against his skin as she unhooks her leg from him and pulls at his shoulder until he’s lying on his back. He glances over to the wall, before looking back at her with a quirk in his lips, “The power’s back on. It might even get a little chilly in here.”

She raises an eyebrow, because she can’t believe he’s quite so shameless and she can’t believe she’s quite so _sure_. She pushes herself up to press her lips to his, intends it to be soft and short but he he reaches up to hold her cheek, kisses her back hungrily, until they’re both breathless and grinning and she realizes she’s feeling a dozen different kinds of warm right now but none of them are uncomfortable.

The warmth sits snugly in her hands as she tucks it around his waist, and in her head as she rests it on his chest, and in her own chest and in her stomach and lower and better and _more_.

“You know-” he starts and she can hear the grin in his voice, feels him shift a little.

“Don’t you dare,” she huffs into his skin, wraps her arm tighter around him.

Probably later they will get out of bed and try and figure out what to have for breakfast and try and figure out what box the mugs are in and maybe later she’ll be able to unpack the rest of her clothes and maybe later they’ll have to run to the store and maybe later this place will feel lived in.

But right now she’s determined to stay in her new bed, determined to enjoy the cool air on her skin, determined to enjoy his steady heartbeat so close to hers, determined to be sure with him.


End file.
